Word: reynaud
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Premier & Defense Minister Paul Reynaud last week told the French Senate and the world that an intellectual revolution had been wrought in the French High Command by Germany's super-Blitzkrieg. The leader of that revolution, tight-mouthed little Maxime Weygand, the new Allied Generalissimo, shot aloft in an airplane from Paris to inspect the churning inferno in Picardy and Flanders out of which he was supposed to bring order, safety, victory...
...things. The bulk of the French mechanized forces (maximum: three divisions), and all the British and Belgian, were in the fatal pocket. Worse still, the Allied Air Forces, as daily losses added up, were whittled lower & lower. Besides attrition, further weakening of the R. A. F.-to which Premier Reynaud paid glowing tribute-by the withdrawal of planes for the defense of Great Britain (see p. 27) was all too possible. Any way it was looked at, the task before Weygand was grim. All week he must have labored desperately, but the atmosphere at his headquarters was as calm, brisk...
Then Prime Minister Winston Churchill flew again to Paris. No one needed to inquire what he had come to ask of Premier Reynaud, Vice Premier Pétain and the Generalissimo: could Weygand rescue the B. E. F.? It was probably too late to withdraw it by sea-any major part of it at least. Battle was joined and if disaster was at hand, nothing could prevent it from being the worst defeat that Britain ever suffered. While the leaders were facing that fact, Weygand excused himself, saying he had forgotten some papers, and nipped up two flights of stairs...
...week's end, M. Reynaud paid Mr. Churchill a visit in London and presently a new Chief of the British Imperial Staff was announced, replacing General Sir Edmund Ironside, who was put in charge of home defense (see p. 27). In a switch strategically parallel to the Weygand-for-Gamelin move, Mr. Churchill called on General Sir John Greer Dill, who was brought home from his command of the B. E. F. First Corps in France in April to be Sir Edmund's Vice Chief and standin. Sir John, 58 and Irish, is accounted the British Army...
...small nicks in the German corridor, the French were thrown. Then, incredibly, at 4 a.m. Tuesday morning, Leopold King of the Belgians-without consulting his Allies, against the counsel of his ministers-tossed in the sponge, ordered his army to lay down its arms. Premier Reynaud embittered, sarcastic, told his people by radio of the action "without precedent in history." Despite their King's order, he said, the Belgian Government would continue to function, would "raise a new army" to fight alongside the allies who came to aid them...